NationStates Jolt Archive

OK, so now I ask,
What is the greatest piece of literature ever?
(Like classics, jane eyre, moby dick, frankenstein, the scarlet letter, wuthering heights)

To Kill A Mocking Bird
Catch 22
Brave New World
1984

Four of the greatest books ever written

Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

To Kill A Mockingbird
Beowulf
The Canterbury Tales

I'm a fan of "Consolatio Philosophiae" myself, one of the most widely distributed and influential works of the Middle Ages. Also:

To Kill a Mockingbird
Dante's Divine Comedy
Eliot's "The Hollow Men"

Animal Farm (1984 sucked. The storyline was pretty good but the writing was poor at best).

War of the Worlds. Gave me nightmares as a kid when I heard the Jeff Wayne version and it's a pretty good story.

I'd also nominate Watchmen and/or V for Vendetta. Either deserves to become a classic.

I'm enjoying The Picture of Dorian Gray, but i'm not widely read...at all.

Glad to see To Kill a Mockingbird on this list. I thought it was a brilliant book.

I personally liked Of Mice and Men
The Terminal Man, Crichton is not a bad author.

Have to agree Of Mice and Men was also an excellnt read.

I forgot to say Catcher In The Rye

Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, Great Expectations (tentatively, as I've got about 80 pages left), the English Patient, and To Kill a Mockingbird (yay for the Bandwagon).

The better the book, the harder to make a movie from it.

Some of the best books made horrible movies.

Have to agree Of Mice and Men was also an excellnt read.

I forgot to say Catcher In The Rye

Good one.

Lord of the Flies was a decent read too.

Oh yes and I add a warning.

For those who value their sanity never ever read Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Serioulsy this book is so boring. There is no set plot and the writing is bad at best

A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

how amazing to see a list right off the bat that i agree with!

i want to add lord of the rings but its only a good story if you skip over all the stupid poetry that doesnt add squat to the plot.

Oh yes and I add a warning.

For those who value their sanity never ever read Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Serioulsy this book is so boring. There is no set plot and the writing is bad at best
Agreed.

I think Crime & Punishment is the best fiction I've ever read.

The Bible is the best literature ever! At least in terms of being influential. It's been around for a long time and I don't see it going anytime soon.

The new X-Men series!

I've read Hard Times and i agree, but then, i don't like Dickens. I don't like Lord of the Flies either.

Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina
Hamlet and Macbeth-My favorite Shakespeare play is Romeo and Juliet, but Hamlet and Macbeth are two of his best written ones
Love in the Time of Cholera-I like it better than 100 Years of Solitude, though both are good books
The Importance of Being Earnest
Gulliver's Travels
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Lord of the Rings-I know many people have said that it's not well-written, but it's my favorite book

I could add more i'm sure, but i'll leave it at that

.....
Anna Karenina
.......
Not completely my cup of tea - I found it overly turgid in places, but I can see why people think it a great work. Have you tried War and Peace? If so, how does it compare? I'd like to read it some time, but I'd like some assurance it's worth the investment of time, since I tend not to get many solid blocks of reading times these days.

No, i haven't read it yet, i haven't found a copy in our book store. An English teacher i had in high school said she had to read it in college i think, and she really didn't seem impressed...lol.

No, i haven't read it yet, i haven't found a copy in our book store. An English teacher i had in high school said she had to read it in college i think, and she really didn't seem impressed...lol.
Thanks. It may be that War & Peace is more of a boy's book ....

The Bible is the best literature ever! At least in terms of being influential. It's been around for a long time and I don't see it going anytime soon.

well, from a literary point of view and if it wasn't the base of monotheistic religion(bits of it anywho), it would kind of get annoying about the 1000 and, or bestowith onto. it's entertaining, like when that time jesus was at a stag party, and they were all like 'heyyyyy jessssuss, we dont gotss no alceehal left'(but like, in aramiac), and he like, made lots of heineken and everyone was happy, and this guy was all like, 'why didn't you serve this first instead of that crap dutch gold??'.

Yeah, she didn't really specify why she didn't like it, but i think it had to do more with it being so long. I assume it can be slow and tough to get through in places. I don't know how she feels about other work by Tolstoy, maybe she just doesn't like him.

Thanks. It may be that War & Peace is more of a boy's book ....

pfft. it was kind of boring and it was really hard to get into when you first start. if you're gonna read war&peace, it's either because you want to prove a point, you want dinner party conversation, or you would like it in the list of books you've read. or, and this is for crazy people, you are reading it for entertainment.

pfft. it was kind of boring and it was really hard to get into when you first start. if you're gonna read war&peace, it's either because you want to prove a point, you want dinner party conversation, or you would like it in the list of books you've read. or, and this is for crazy people, you are reading it for entertainment.
*Signs up on the Crazy People list.*

I haven't got time for the other reasons, hence my concern over putting the initial investment of time in to give it a chance.

*Signs up on the Crazy People list.*

I haven't got time for the other reasons, hence my concern over putting the initial investment of time in to give it a chance.

well, in fact, i'm one of those people too. i did waste like a month on it. i didn't really find it all that worth it. it wasn't bad, but i didn't find it brilliant either. ah, but to each their own.

Recently The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
also Different Seasons by Stephen King
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

My mom read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to my sister and I when we were in Elementary school (I am 22 now) and I am just rereading The Fellowship of the Ring again (I am on chapter 5 and loving every minute of it)

I disagree with whoever called the poety stupid, Tolkien intended The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings to be more than stories, he made them to be a European pre-history and you can tell a lot about a society by their songs and poetry.

One of my favorite short stories is called "There Will Come Soft Rains" by Ray Bradbury. If you've never read it, you should, and I think it can be found for free on the internet. If anyone does read it let me know what you think =)

I read The Catcher in the Rye in high school and personally it didn't impress me all that much, I kept saying to myself "any minute now it's going to get good, it's going to pick up" but no it never did get any better and it never did pick up but hey it's all personal preference.

I'd go with either Shakespeare's "Macbeth", or Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".

Recently The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Holy femininisticifikated turd, Batman!

i might be leaning towards hitchhiker's guide to the universe myself

I tried reading The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, i never got into it, it's just not my thing. It really is subjective, i've heard people say Don Quixote for example is one of the greatest novels ever written. I thought it was alright, but not nearly as good as all that.

My favorite book of all time are in separate genres:
Gothicism would definately be Wuthering Heights!!
Adventure: I am reading Moby Dick, which is verbose, but liked Ivanhoe
Mystery: definately one of Edgar allen poe.
Poetry: I am reading the Canturbury tales, Beowulf"
I also love The Tale Of Genji, the oldest novel. The new translation by tyler is phenomenal. Truly Poetic.

The five best novels, in no particular order:

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Jungle by Upton Sinclair
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
1984 by George Orwell

I read The Catcher in the Rye in high school and personally it didn't impress me all that much, I kept saying to myself "any minute now it's going to get good, it's going to pick up" but no it never did get any better and it never did pick up but hey it's all personal preference.I have to agree. It was a good book, but hardly worthy of the status it's received. Holden was such a generic character, and the parts that weren't generic made it seem like he was going through a mid-life crisis.

To Kill A Mocking Bird
Catch 22
Brave New World
1984

Four of the greatest books ever written


Starship troopers
1984
The bible-not exactly literature, but it's definetly numero uno.

Pride And Prejudice - Jane Austen

Tolkien, Lord of the Rings...for reasons discussed time and time again.

The cereal box is the greatest literature genre created. It is almost universal in appeal to cereal eaters

I don't know about the greatest literature of all time, since I haven't read much, but the best books I've ever read are:

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Animal Farm - George Orwell
A Midsummer Night's Dream - William Shakespeare

Some Chinese classics (you never said it has to be in English :p):
Journey to the West and Romance of Three Kingdoms

My favourite French books:
Le Petit Prince and La Dame aux Camelias

I'm working on Catch 22 right now...slowly...

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.

Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card.

'Tis a good one. :)

Wuthering Heights

*shudders*

*shudders*
What? I like that book. It's not my favourite, but it isn't bad.

Hemmingway is my favorite author when Im suffering from insomnia.

I can barely get past the second extremely long descriptive paragraph before Im nodding off.

Mark Twain is always good if I need a chuckle

Paradise Lost
Divine Comedy
Marat/Sade
Zoo Story
Hamlet
Othello
Lord of the Flies
White Noise
Europe Central
1984
Through The Looking Glass
The Prince
The Art Of War
Things Fall Apart
Les Miserables

What? I like that book. It's not my favourite, but it isn't bad.

I had to study it in a university course this year. I think that contributes.

...I hate dissecting books.

I had to study it in a university course this year. I think that contributes.

...I hate dissecting books.
haha...nah, that one was painful, even for me. And I get off on dissecting books.

Three favorites of mine are Plato's Republic, The Picture of Dorian Grey, and A Clockwork Orange.

The Three Musketeers.

The Count of Monte Cristo.

The Prince, by Nicollo Machiavelli...if you can call that literature.

Jack Vance's Dying Earth series--especially the middle two "Cugel Books".

To Tinnuviel and the three other people who have mentioned the greatest work of literature ever: I salute you.

I am, of course, talking about Lord of the Rings.

Crappy poetry? Tolkien was doing it in the style of medieval epics like Beowulf and the tales of the Kalevala. It's not Shakespeare or Dickinson poetry; it's not intended as such.

Tolkien did what almost no other author has: He created a universe, in its entirety, and wrote the entire history of it. Lord of the Rings is, besides being excellent in a purely analytical literary sense, a phenomenal work of imagination. For example, you could trace the lineage of almost any LOTR character back to the first members of their race. Aragorn especially-- did you know he and Arwen are first cousins, roughly 64 times removed (if one assumes that the generations of the Lords of Andunie progressed at the same rate as the Kings of Numenor between the birth of Silmarien and the Downfall of Numenor)?

I know, I'm a nerd. I love it.


As for the oft-mentioned Wuthering Heights, if I ever read it, I won't be able to take it seriously since I've seen Monty Python's rendition of it in semaphore.

I must say, I was a little bit surprised at how frequently To Kill a Mockingbird was mentioned. I have read it, and while I enjoyed it quite a bit, it didn't stand out to me as something that I would include in the greatest books of all time.

Other excellent books:
Dune
Ender's Game & Speaker For the Dead
Lord of the Flies
A bunch of Shakespeare-- Macbeth, R & J, Hamlet, King Lear (they're plays, I think they count as literature)

Joseph Conrad–‘Heart of Darkness’
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn–‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich’
George Orwell–‘Down and Out in Paris and London’
Václav Havel–‘The Memorandum’
Alan Moore–‘From Hell’
Fyodor Dostoevsky–‘The Idiot’
Charles Bukowski–‘Ham on Rye’

Fan. Bloody. Tastic. All of ‘em.

EDIT: Kudos to Kirmania for suggesting Plato’s ‘Republic’; always good to plug philosophy at peeps.

how amazing to see a list right off the bat that i agree with!

i want to add lord of the rings but its only a good story if you skip over all the stupid poetry that doesnt add squat to the plot.

The whole point of a good book is that there is a hell of a lot more to it thatn a good plot - even Da Vinci code has an exciting plot.

Joseph Conrad–‘Heart of Darkness’

*vomit*...sorry, it just happens. :( :p

I loved The Iliad and Odyssey

My favourite French books:
Le Petit Prince and La Dame aux Camelias


I know it was written in French, by a Frenchman, but it is a Brazilian book! (Antoine de Saint-Exupery was living here, in Santa Caterina, when he wrote it.)

Greatest literature:
Shakespeare - all the plots that there have ever been.
Jonathon Swift - Gullivers Travels (the greatest satire ever.)

ok, but what is your fave shakespeare, mine is King Lear

Tacitus - The Annals of Imperial Rome or

Suetonius - The Twelve Caesars

cha

ok, but what is your fave shakespeare, mine is King Lear

I cannot name one play as a favourite, as my preference shifts with time and my life circumstances.
At the moment, my prefered play is The Tempest.

Right now I'd say Houellebecq's Elementary Particles...
and every single thing written by Bukowski

i also write

Mary Shelly's Frankenstien. Best book ever, no really I mean it, go out and read it folx.

That is really good

The Canturberry Tales
Lord of the Flies
War of the Worlds
Brave New World
Death Be Not Proud(poem)

LOTR is way too hard for me to read. Every few pages, I have to hear about some 200-year-old event, on, and on for paragraphs... Gandalf (http://www.clicksmilies.com/s0105/verkleidung/costumed-smiley-091.gif)!

LOTR is way too hard for me to read. Every few pages, I have to hear about some 200-year-old event, on, and on for paragraphs...
This is exactly, amongst other things, what makes its charm and beauty.

"To Kill A Mocking Bird" is on top of my list, plus a good number of the books already mentionned. I would add:

The Brothers Karamazov - Dostoevsky
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
An Equal Music - Vikram Seth

Though I don't think one could call it literature, I admit I did enjoy JM Auel's Earth Children series.

i have always been a fun of dr suess and clifford the big red dog books :D

oh and almost forgot goosebumps, those books are great

Oh, and another thing: all of Rafael Sabatini's books are excellent. Captain Blood, Scaramouche, and The Sea Hawk are all top-notch adventure yarns.

A book series that I believe will become a classic is the 'His Dark Materials' by Philip Pullman. If you haven't read it I recommend it

*vomit*...sorry, it just happens. :( :p

Why so? Conrad’s an outstanding author. Do the page-long descriptions put you off; too convaluted?

Seeing as Robert Louis Stevenson isn't receiving much love in this thread, I think I'll put in a vote for Treasure Island. ARRRRR! :)

i loved that book

In no order whatsoever:
LOTR
1984
Hamlet
The Emperor - series
A bunch of other books I have fogotten the title of.

I cannot decide what is the "greatest." Here are four of my favorites, in no order and not intended to be comprehensive:

Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot
William Shakespeare's Hamlet
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
George Orwell's 1984

I love the story of waiting for godot

I've read Hard Times and i agree, but then, i don't like Dickens. I don't like Lord of the Flies either.

Crime and Punishment
Anna Karenina
Hamlet and Macbeth-My favorite Shakespeare play is Romeo and Juliet, but Hamlet and Macbeth are two of his best written ones
Love in the Time of Cholera-I like it better than 100 Years of Solitude, though both are good books
The Importance of Being Earnest
Gulliver's Travels
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Lord of the Rings-I know many people have said that it's not well-written, but it's my favorite book

I could add more i'm sure, but i'll leave it at that

the importance of being earnest is the most brilliantly funny play ever.

I love the story of waiting for godot

Yeah, i'll give you that one. It's cool. It means whatever you damn well want it to. :D

Yeah, i'll give you that one. It's cool. It means whatever you damn well want it to. :D

The meaning is rather clear, if you read through the whole thing carefully and you know the basics of its philosophical context.

Thank you two, because I was so flabberghasted at the vulgar slang exuded within that sentence. I was perplexed to the climax of insanity, and then you delivered me forth.


DUH!

The meaning is rather clear, if you read through the whole thing carefully and you know the basics of its philosophical context.
Oh, my then....do go on....

*has to write an exam on it* ;)

Oh, my then....do go on....

*has to write an exam on it* ;)

Waiting for Godot is basically a metaphor for life, specifically for the endless search for meaning that obsesses existentialists. That is more or less what "Godot" represents - higher meaning, higher purpose in life, a coherence to a seemingly absurd world. The overall point of the play is that there is no such thing. Both the acts end with the boy informing them that Godot will not come, that their attempt has proved fruitless, and in fact Godot will never come - the search for a higher meaning will never succeed, because no such meaning exists.

Vladimir and Estragon are repeatedly distracted - by carrots, hats, radishes, Pozzo and Lucky, etc. These are self-distractions; there are attempts to escape from the reality of the absurdity.

Lucky is "lucky" because he is not an independent actor; he has relinquished his freedom and his responsibility. The question of meaning does not bother him, because he does not deal with circumstances where it is relevant. Pozzo is making all the decisions for him. His "speech" is a mockery of theology and the other attempts to create a framework to subordinate human beings to a higher power, destiny, etc.

The basic theme is repeated twice, but with a number of distinctions. The distinctions range from the insignificant to the seemingly miraculous, such as the growth on the tree, but none of them, ultimately, make a difference - Godot is still nowhere to be found, and Vladimir and Estragon remain where they started.

Naturally, interpretations vary to some degree; I am giving my own opinion here, not some official one.

If you waant a metaphor, look in Moby Dick, or Don Quixote.


Hav any of you read a Tale Of Genji?

In no particular order

1. Macbeth by William Shakespeare
2. The Calvin and Hobbes Collection by Bill Watterson
3. Paradise Lost by Milton
4. Superman by Joe Schuster and Jerry Seigel
5. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
6. The Holy Bible, King James Edition by various authors
7. Posterior Analytica by Aristotle
8. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant
9. Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
10. The Diary of Adam and Eve by Mark Twain

It's fairly 20th-century American-centric, but they are all must reads. I made an effort to get some comedy on there as well; after all, its just as difficult to write humor as to write tragedy, and you get less respect for it to boot.

calvin and hobbes is hilarious

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Brave New World
The Catcher in the Rye
The Good Earth
A Separate Peace
To Kill a Mockingbird
Jane Eyre
War of the Worlds
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Scarlet Letter
Of Mice and Men

Hav any of you read a Tale Of Genji?
Yep, I've read Genji monogatari, but I didn't much like it :/...

Faust I and II

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

ok

Joseph Conrad–‘Heart of Darkness’
*vomit*...sorry, it just happens. :( :p

Hahahaha, thank God, I was about to do that too. I can't stand that book, and the same goes for Things Fall Apart and God's Little Bits of Wood. A baby's head being trampled just isn't my idea of good reading.

I forgot one in my list earlier... We by Yevgeny Zamyatin. It is super awesome, but I've never met anyone else who has read it. It has sort of the same premise as 1984 and Brave New World, but is awesomer D:.

Have you seen it as a play? Amazing. I went and saw it at the Stanley Theatre with my Literature class, and while I didn't get into at first, I walked out of the theatre a little bit obsessed.

And as for interpretations, there are many. Some say that Godot represents God, and the fact that he never comes, well, says something about the nature of God and religion. Others, as said above, think it just represents higher meaning. There's that bit that goes on about the non-linearity of time, and how everything exists at one moment - that's why they can't remember what they did the day before, or the day before that, or was it all years ago? (And when they ask Pozzo when he went blind, since they think they saw him the day before but he could see at the time, Pozzo responds - amazing line - "One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you?")

I'd like to take a moment to add "Waiting for Godot" to my list of top literature. I can't believe I forgot it!

Godot's last post:

brb

I have the play version

Have you seen it as a play? Amazing. I went and saw it at the Stanley Theatre with my Literature class, and while I didn't get into at first, I walked out of the theatre a little bit obsessed.

I hate watching plays, it always ruins it for me. Waiting for Godot took me two reads to fully appreciate it, but once I did, I loved it.

And as for interpretations, there are many. Some say that Godot represents God,

Beckett denied that this was the case. If there is a "God" figure anywhere, I think it is Pozzo.

There's that bit that goes on about the non-linearity of time, and how everything exists at one moment - that's why they can't remember what they did the day before, or the day before that, or was it all years ago?

The point is two-fold, as far I can tell; firstly, that they are experiencing confused recollection, because they know that they have done this, they know that they have tried this already, but they are delusionally trying it again because they are desperate for meaning, even though they failed the last time. Secondly, the time doesn't matter, any more than the specific circumstances do. Godot still doesn't come.

Again, this is a metaphor for the human search for meaning; one attempt ends in futility, and so another attempt is made, but the second does as well. The attempts can be vastly different in specifics, they can be spiritual or materialist or whatever, but ultimately they are all futile, and one is no better than the next, because they are all, ultimately, the same futile search.

Why so? Conrad’s an outstanding author. Do the page-long descriptions put you off; too convaluted?

No...the characters annoyed me, and none caught my interest.